Burlington in Top 20 wreck rankings in state

Burlington ranks in the Top 20 in vehicle crashes for cities in North Carolina with more than 10,000 residents.

Results from the N.C. Department of Transportation were released Tuesday. Burlington ranked No. 16 in the survey of crashes from 2012. A year earlier, the city ranked 19th.

The rankings are based on a number of factors — number of reported crashes, severity of crashes and crash rates based upon population — included.

The city had 5,939 crashes in 2012. Graham ranked 50th with 1,010 crashes while Mebane finished 75th with 1,037 collisions. Mebane had more crashes than Graham, but finished lower in the rankings. Officials with the DOT said this owes to the other factors that go into determining a city’s placement on the list.

For instance, Asheville topped the list with 12,626 crashes reported in 2012. Charlotte had more than 79,000 wrecks in the same period, but placed third.

As a county, Alamance ranked 67th out of 100 counties, down from No. 64 in 2011. Guilford County ranked 44th, Caswell was 81st and Orange came in at 94th.

Of Burlington’s accidents, 3.7 percent were alcohol-related. A total of 5.25 percent of the accidents reported in Graham involved alcohol, while alcohol was a factor in 2.89 percent of Mebane’s accidents.

Reid Metters, a staff sergeant with the Burlington Police Department and supervisor of the department’s traffic division, said despite the slight ranking increase, he feels Burlington’s streets are safe.

There is, Metters admitted, always room for improvement.

“Personally, I’d like to see the numbers drop,” he said. “Inattention and excessive speed are our primary problems. If we could slow people down, we’d gradually decrease this number.”

Metters said he recently completed a report of the number of vehicle crashes in Burlington reported in the first quarter of 2013. That number totaled 581, a slight decrease from the 598 accidents reported in the fourth quarter of 2012.

Metters said four of Burlington’s top six intersections for accidents are along Church Street — at its intersections with Alamance Road, Fulton Street, Graham-Hopedale Road and Williamson Avenue.

He said a city’s size is likely going to play into its ranking.

“If we’re the 16th-largest city in the state, it stands to reason we’re going to be 16th in crashes,” Metters said.

For the record, Burlington is the 17th largest city in North Carolina with 51,306 inhabitants.